As a chef for children with food allergies, I am always on the lookout for manufactured products that are simple. Not all families can make everything from scratch and many rely on pre-made products. The simpler the ingredient list, the easier it is for me to decide if the product is safe for the kids that I feed.

A new product that I just found at Costco is Organic Edamame Spaghetti. For ingredients, it says “Organic Edamame (Green Soybeans), Water.

For my soy-allergic kids, this would obviously not be a good choice. For almost everyone else, it rocks!!! With just two ingredients, it is easy to figure out who can have it and who can’t. What I love about this product besides it only having two ingredients, is that it tastes really yummy. It is kid tested – the Walker Girls approved. And, it has the added benefit of having 24 grams of protein for 2 ounces! When I first tried this product, I couldn’t believe how full I felt after eating just one serving. It is also high in fiber.

Here is another great one!

All it has in it is dried bananas!!! These are so delicious. Again, the fact that this product has one ingredient helps me. I can recommend this to almost all my clients. Unless they are allergic to bananas, can’t have that much Potassium, or need products lower in sugar, this rocks it!

I know some would say that you just can’t trust that these products don’t have trace amounts of other ingredients that the FDA does not require be put in the ingredient list. For my clients, I call the companies to ask about cross contamination and trace ingredients to make sure that the items are safe.

If you must use processed food, these types of products are probably the safest manufactured food that you can buy. And for those kids with food allergies, finding products like these is the best way to keep kids safe and satisfied!

Merriam-Webster defines allergy as “a medical condition that causes someone to become sick after eating, touching, or breathing something that is harmless to most people.”

According to FARE (Food Allergy Research and Education), as many as 15 million people have food allergies. 9 million or 4% of adults suffer from food related allergies and 6 million or 8% of all children have them.

There is no known cure for food allergies. Some people become sensitive to certain foods as an adult while others find that they have “grown out” of ones they suffered from as a child.

There are many theories about why food allergies are so prevalent now. Some think that there have been food allergies throughout history but that advances in medical care have allowed people to survive reactions where they may not have had survived before. Other believe that processed food is to blame. Still many other people believe that our environment has attributed to the rise in these allergies.

It seems like everyone either has allergies themselves or knows people with them. It is useless to postulize the origin of allergic reactions to food. What seems important is to be sensitive to those who struggle with food allergies and to be accommodating and sympathetic to special requests or concerns.

I have worked in restaurants, hotels, banquet facilities, and culinary schools. And I can tell you that you can never feel safe!

Whether you have allergies or are on a diet, restaurants are dangerous. First of all, the folks that work in many restaurants (specifically low to mid end chains) are usually not trained on special diets. Many do not understand how dangerous cross contamination is. And, as much training as they have, it is almost impossible to keep allergic separate from non-allergic foods. For example, when there are any nuts on a salad line, it is almost 100% guaranteed that those nuts are getting mixed with other ingredients. Imagine taking a spoon full of nuts that are in a container at arms length and carrying it to a plate in front of you. How likely is it that you will drop a piece or two between the container and your plate. Now imagine being in a rush. Balancing those little pieces on a spoon at high speed is even harder. And, if you have little training on cross contamination, you may not realize that just avoiding that nut in the container of avocados (but serving those avocados anyway) can cause someone to stop breathing…

If you ever order chicken “dry” or without oil, it is almost impossible for the piece of chicken to have no oil. Restaurants use oil in EVERYTHING. Oil and fat is what makes food taste good and look attractive. If you have ever cooked a piece of chicken breast in a pan with just a little non-stick cooking spray, you will know that it looks dry. When you are dieting, this is fine. But no restaurant wants their food to look like that. Any food that is shiny, crispy, or creamy has A LOT of fat.

If you order a salad without lets say, olives, and it comes with olives, you send it back right? Chances are that the kitchen will just pick the olives off. It costs the kitchen time and money to remake a salad and many restaurants do not want to lose money making another salad. It really depends on the quality of the restaurant and the staff.

The higher end restaurant you visit, the better the chances are that they are sympathetic and accommodating to food allergies and diets. I have a friend who has a child with several allergies. When she does eat out, she brings food for him because she can not take the chance of him eating something that he is allergic to. However, when they went on a Disney Cruise, she told me how great the chef was and how she was able to allow him to eat food prepared in the kitchen because of the high level of sensitivity the staff had to her son’s issues.

Although I love to dine out, there is really no safer place to eat then in my home where I prepare the food and know exactly what goes into it. If you have to eat out, be as communicative as possible with the staff at the restaurant. Ask to speak to the chef, who is in charge of the kitchen and may be able to prepare food as you need to or at least tell you that they can not.

If you have any questions about this, please send me an email from my webpage.

I subscribe to 8 different food magazines. I do not read them cover to cover, but I read those articles and recipes that interest me. I came across an article in Allrecipes Magazine, September/October 2015. The article was called “Taste Test.” The article, written by Benandbirdy, talks about how to get kids to try new tastes. Is it a coincidence that my last post was about getting kids to try new foods? I just love what the author said about getting kids to try foods by doing a spice taste test (putting different dried spices on a plate and having them dip apple slices in each to evaluate the taste), offering a little bit of several types of mustard and giving them vegetables to dip into each, providing pieces of different fresh herbs and having the kids dip in dressing, pour different vinegars into bowls and have them dip a piece of pasta in each and finally let them try all salty type of seasonings. What was interesting was that we had just taken my youngest daughter to the Paso Robles Olive Festival in Paso Robles, California. We brought home several different types of olive oils and vinegars. I caught my daughter and her friend in the kitchen pretending that they were olive oil critics, judging each and picking a “winner.” I realized that this type of activity is just incredible for kids. It allows them to play with food and experiment in a casual atmosphere. I think that it could be difficult for a child, while eating dinner with the family to try a new food because of the pressure they feel from their family members. They may not want to hurt dad’s feelings because he made dinner and doesn’t cook often, or he/she might feel bad if they say they like a food that sister cooked when mom’s cooking skills are not the best. Sampling food gives kids a chance to try what they want and what kid doesn’t like to dip??? My suggestion is to read the article or just make up your own taste test for your kids. You might even find a new food or condiment that you didn’t know you liked!

Here is a shout out to a great family farm called Pasolivo, http://www.pasolivo.com in Paso Robles, California. They have a fun tasting room where you place small spoonfuls of any of their many spices and spice blends on a tasting plate. They give you a huge bag of bread and you walk down a line of olive oils where you can pour a sample of each. You then take a hunk of bread, dip it into a olive oil or vinegar, and then dip it into a spice. They have eight different oils (basil, tangerine, regular olive oil blends) and nine different spices or blend (black lava salt, truffle salt, barbecue blend, lavender blend.) The kids LOVED sampling all the oils and spices. Beware: If you turn your kid into a foodie, IT WILL COST YOU!!! I should know. I have four kids who eat almost anything and stick up their noses to kids menus. You can also order products from them online. However, if you tour, you get to see the press where they cold press their own olives to make the oil that they sell.

Do you have the type of family that enjoys repeat recipes every one or two weeks? Or is your family like mine and need a six month rotation? My family is high maintenance!! Not only do they not want to repeat a protein in a week, but if I make the same item more than once a quarter, I have a rebellion on my hands.

No matter which side of the spectrum your family falls, it is important to keep records of the meals that your family enjoys. Doing so will allow you to understand preferences and trends. You may find, for example, that chicken can be served multiple times a week if the preparations are diverse.

I recommend keeping a little diary in your kitchen. At the end of each day, jot down what your family ate that day. You do not have to give great detail. Add little notes of things that work for your family and others that do not. An example would be:

I also keep all the recipes that I use, if I do indeed use a recipe, in a binder so that I could refer back to meals I have made in the past. I write all over the recipes with changes that I made and how the family liked it or not. If they did not, I actually get rid of the recipe so that I do not make it again.

After a few months, you will not only have a little custom cookbook just for your family, but also you will realize what your family really loves and what is not worth making.

You know when you get into the ocean and it is very cold at first but you get used to it after a minute or two? This is similar to the texture issue. Gradually making changes can help. Add some spaghetti to macaroni, a little at a time. Gradually add more and more until it is all spaghetti. If your child won’t eat tough meats, start out with filet or a soft, non-fiberous meat first and gradually move toward steaks with more texture. Some experts say that you have to try a food 20 or more times before you will grow to like it. It takes time and patience. However, by introducing different foods young, you may prevent this problem all together. And remember, if you do not like something….. more than likely your kids won’t like it, unless you introduce it to them anyway or model good “trying new food” behavior. “See…. even mommy tries food that she doesn’t like.” At our house, we have what is called a “no thank you bite.” Everyone has to try everything and then they can decide if they want to eat more. More often than not, the kids like the food that they think they will not.

I am not a doctor …. and NO I do not play one on TV or anywhere else for that matter. But I believe that one of the reasons that kids have texture issues has to do with exposure. Now for some kids, texture in food is an issue that is connected to the challenges that he/she faces with regard to ADD, ADHD and/or Autism. But for other kids, they have not had exposure to food with new textures. I have seen it several times. A child was given Kraft Macaroni and Cheese as a toddler. The smooth texture of the small macaroni in the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese becomes comfortable to this child. Honestly, I do not know how you can even call the noodles in the Kraft box “macaroni” as its shape is more like little “hose” snippets. Anyway…. If a child eats this type of “macaroni” for a few years, without exposure to spaghetti, rigatoni, alphabet noodles or even spiral noodles, a new texture might feel odd to the child. It might be undesirable and foreign to the child’s palette. So mom reverts back to the ‘ole stand-by for a few more years. In those additional years, the child has become more sensitive to different pasta shapes and it actually might feel uncomfortable, with the pasta’s rough edges or curves to chew a different noodle. When the child has reached ten or eleven, the thought of trying a new pasta proves anxiety-ridden. Mom does not want to fight it and proceeds to indulge the child by only providing the Kraft stuff. So, the child is resolved by his/her teenage years to not even try new pastas….. why start now, they might think. This same story could apply to any type of food…… chewy meat, soft cream cheese, fibrous asparagus, or even crunchy apples. The longer the child goes, excluding certain textures, the harder it may be to reintroduce them. I knew a kid who would only eat ziti. When mom would try to get him to try spaghetti or another shape of pasta, he would either not try it at all or try it and not like it. Finally, he became an adult and out of peer pressure, he began to try other pastas and realize that they were not so bad. For some families, they might think that this scenario is fine because ultimately, he was pressured into trying new foods as an adult. But I think that intervening a lot sooner would have showed him that he could try new foods at a much younger age. Needless to say, this was only one of the food issues that he had. I am a firm believer that we should introduce our kids to as many textures and tastes early. I have been known to tell moms that it goes way back to what you ate when you were pregnant or nursing. If you did not eat pickles or mushrooms during your pregnancy, during nursing, when he/she was a toddler, then school age, then your child may not ever like pickles or mushrooms. Mom’s food issues could and often get passed down to her children. The moral: from pregnancy to nursing to toddler on up, expose your kids to as many foods as you can, regardless of whether you like those foods or not. This will give them a better chance at becoming an adventurous eater later. I will get off my pedestal now….

When pediatricians, allergists, dietitians and nutritionists make recommendations to moms, it could be confusing and overwhelming. Cooking without fat, using more protein, roasting vegetables, eliminating carbohydrates, avoiding gluten…. these and hundreds more are instructions that the professionals suggest you to follow. But the application of these directions can be hard for moms who do not cook, who do not know much about food, who do not have time to plan and shop, and who have picky eaters. I feel so bad for these families who are paralyzed because the suggestions from the professionals seem daunting. Working with a chef who understands children and brings years of experience and knowledge can help families find easy meals that work for those affected with and by allergies, aversions and special diets.